I work for a large Geogrpahic Information Systems (GIS) company, we were using "Google Earth" before there even was a Google.
You'd be amazed at the amount of data that most municipalities have these days and the sophisticated ways in visualizing it.
In our situation we have virtually every municipal and utility feature (water/sewer mains, poles, hydrants, your lot and house footprint, assessment info, meters, cables, pumps, road edges, etc etc) geographically located and sitting overtop satellite imagery.
It pretty amazing and the commercial grade software is far more powerful than Google Earth, Googles major feat is delivering something so solid to the masses that is easy to use.